


Heartbeat Messages

by BranwellBronte



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anxiety and depression issues, First Times, Hand Jobs, M/M, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Romance, Tender - Freeform, sex becoming love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 05:16:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17656619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BranwellBronte/pseuds/BranwellBronte
Summary: Lieutenant Graham Gore, suffering from anxiety, finds an understanding soul in Harry Goodsir. Physical touch cements a deep connection that turns into love.





	Heartbeat Messages

“Where does it ache, exactly? Can you point?”

“Right here.” Gore had started to touch his head on one side but Goodsir had made a “Hmm mm!” noise and waved one hand rapidly side to side while the other caught Gore’s fingers hovering near his forehead.

“Don’t touch it, please, just point. Yes? Across the forehead, then? I see. I’ll prepare the tincture for you, then.”

Tinctures help a little bit. Not as much as breaking the “no touching” rule, though, which has been decidedly abandoned these past nights in the infirmary. Gore presses his forehead into Goodsir’s shoulder as he comes, laughing into his skin as he remembers that a forehead headache originally brought them together. The only time the goddamn pain has ever paid off in his life. A pretty big payday, too.

***

_Before-_

            “Well, Lieutenant, what exciting tale can you regale us with?” Fitzjames steeples his fingers across from Gore at the dinner table. His fingers look better steepled than bunched up indicating the size of all the musket balls in his chest. To be fair, Gore knows there’s only the one ball embedded in Fitzjames’s skin, but with the zest and detail he’s been telling the story (Gore overheard him reciting it to the other Marines in the mess hall the other day), you’d think there were at least ten.

            “No stories as exciting as yours, Commander, I’m afraid.” Gore forks a bit of food into his mouth, swallows, and smiles brightly at him. “I wish I had been to China, but even then, I doubt I’d have anything as frightening as snipers set upon me. Nothing that exciting ever happens to me, I’m afraid.”

            Fitzjames’s mouth seems to half smile and half frown at the same time, which seems like an impossible gesture, but the man is insufferable in every other way so why not be insufferably talented at bizarre facial expressions, too? “I know my story is unique, Lieutenant Gore. But you must have something interesting you can share with us.”

            Yes, Gore thinks as he clinks his fork back on his plate and sips from whatever isn’t alcohol in his glass (why, oh why, did fate deal him _Erebus_ with its teetotaler captain?). I have something interesting to share. Do you want to know where I’d like to be right now? At home. Having dinner with wine with a handsome man and then going to bed with him and waking up in peace instead of listening to you prattle, prattle, prattle…

            The first feeling of the headache twinges in the side of his forehead but he holds his glass steady as he drinks. He’s been holding glasses and utensils and guns and all objects and his own hands steady his whole life. Even James Fitzjames can’t make him slip up.

            “Well, I have been dreaming every night for the past month about being on this ship. Not just being on the _ship_. But standing on deck while we sail through the Passage and we all cheer. It’s such a beautiful sound in my head.” He smiles, picks up his fork again, and eats, then eats some more.

            Both sides of Fitzjames’s mouth are frowning now. Gore spun him a deliberately dreadfully boring story and anything Fitzjames counters it with will seem like miserable showboating, even for James fucking “a bullet the size of a cherry” Fitzjames. So there’s silence for a few beats while Gore actively doesn’t look at the other men, only the shine of the lamplight on his plate and the image in his mind of being hand-fed something that doesn’t come from a can by a naked man in his arms. That’s what will make this voyage worth it. The Passage is a success. Then it’s over. Then home. Some man he’ll manage to find. Good food and drink with him. A rollicking fuck afterwards, followed by the peaceful glow when his daily strained nerves are soothed into their proper shapes and his heartbeats don’t fall out of rhythm, not even once. The fear at bay, where it so seldom is.

            “An excellent example of a motivated man, for his own nightly dreams to reflect the moment of our success. May the Lord send His blessing upon you, Lieutenant.” Sir John smiles benevolently at Gore and so all the other men are suddenly smiling at Gore, who keeps his smiles expertly free of wobbles as he inclines his head to their murmurs of “Ahh” and “A good dream.” Fitzjames drinks from his glass while the other men smile. Sir John claps Gore on the shoulder when they rise.

            “I am proud to have you here, Lieutenant Gore.”

            “I am proud to be here.” Gore smiles through the horrific lie.

***

            Graham Gore doesn’t hate James Fitzjames. He doesn’t hate anyone. He has too much self-loathing to have the energy for that.

            “You’re going to be a Marine,” his father had said to him when Gore was a teenager.

            “Does that mean a lot of training?” Graham had asked.

            “Yes.”

            Hmm. Sounded stressful. “I don’t really want to be a Marine. I think I’ll be something else.”

            His father had hit him.

It was the last time Gore had ever said the words “I don’t really want to,” out loud. It seemed like an increasingly poor thing to say as he progressed through training and then into active service because it was a _disagreeing_ thing to say and _disagreeing_ is the perfect example of an action which causes a hot roiling in the stomach, a clenching of the heart, and nerves in the forehead beginning to radiate pain across the whole head. Don’t disagree with your teachers. You got a bad mark? It’s your own fault, then, no trying to defend your work. Don’t disagree with your trainers. Your maneuver with the rifle was close but not quite on point and so you’ve two hours extra practice assigned? You deserve them. Yes sir, yes sir.

And, most critically, do not disagree when you’re tapped as a good candidate as a Lieutenant on the HMS _Erebus_. Yes, oh yes, Sir John, I’m honored, I’m beyond honored in fact, I’m a bit speechless, forgive me, it will be the greatest pleasure of my life to serve under you as we serve the glory of Queen and country and God, most importantly.

Gore had shaken Franklin’s hand vigorously, signed the appropriate documents, packed his trunks, sat in his room on land one last time, and cried his eyes out into his hands cupped around his face to muffle the sounds even though there was no one to hear. Unfamiliar men on an unfamiliar ship for several years. No lovers. Loneliness. Fear that someone will figure out he loves men anyway. The largest performance of “Oh yes, I’m perfectly alright,” of his life. What if the ship capsizes? What about pirates? Pirates. Pfft. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Yet it would be enough to give him a headache, and he cannot visit the infirmary often to ask for medicine, he cannot, cannot, _cannot_ seem to be sick, weak, like he doesn’t belong, an outcast, a no-good, a poor choice, a shame on Franklin and on England. No failing. Failure is the rifle aimed at his head and he _cannot_ give the trigger a reason to be pulled.

He’d cried until his head pounded and his eyes burned. He’d mixed a tincture into water for his head, laid down on his bed and gotten himself off to lessen the pain even more, then cleaned and dressed and made his way to the docks where he boarded and smiled as his hand was shaken by what felt like all 132 other men and he saw his smile reflected in their eyes. Wasn’t he just marvelously excited and proud? Oh yes, more than at any other time in his life.

When the ships docked at Disko Bay and it was decided five men would be sent home, Gore had considered his possibilities. He’d run out of the tinctures he’d brought within two weeks. Headaches were not a strong enough excuse to be discharged because there were medicine drops on board for that, he’d found out after this (“Is this an ailment from childhood?” Dr. Stanley had asked. “No,” Gore had said. “This is unusual, it will pass with your good help, I’m sure. Say, wasn’t Sir John’s sermon especially poignant? I was in the front row as always…”). In what way could he be discharged and sent home? What if he made himself fall down a flight of stairs to try to break a bone? Would it be bad enough that Stanley couldn’t fix it and Gore would have to be sent home in a cast? The last night before departure from Greenland, Gore had hovered at the top of a staircase. What would be the best way? To try and trip himself? To jump? What if he bungled it and killed himself? His heart had skipped as he imagined what would be written about him. “Lieutenant Graham Gore was the only casualty of the expedition. He tragically fell down a flight of stairs slightly more than a month into the journey and broke every bone in his body. He was laid to rest in his hometown of Portsmouth, but there was no memorial plaque placed on the wall of his childhood home because his parents moved away and changed their name immediately once they heard the bad news that their son was the biggest fucking idiot and shame in the history of the British Royal Navy.”

So he had walked back to his berth and laid down and gotten himself off and then sat down to dinner with Franklin and the other senior officers and smiled and, passing Fitzjames on the stairs later, agreed that it was good riddance to get rid of the five useless men and that now only the cream of the crop remained.

***

            “The poor lad.”

            “Indeed.”

            “Is there any hope?”

            “Not likely.” Dr. Stanley doesn’t glance at the sleeping David Young as he mixes the drops in the glass and hands it to Gore. Goodsir has the back of his hand on the boy’s forehead and Gore sees his shoulders tense at Stanley’s words. It’s very easy to tell when a man’s shoulders tense up. Gore knows the involuntary movement that accompanies any variety of fear, whether it be nerves or just plain dread.

            “Thank you, Doctor.” Gore closes his eyes while he downs the drink. The water doesn’t taste much different with the drops in it. They’re not the same ones he used at home, but similar. Slightly bitter but nothing to knock his eyes back in his head.

Gore wishes they had knocked his eyes back in his head. It would have been a good distraction from the physical pain in his head and the emotional pain of finally caving to ask for medicine.

            When he opens his eyes, Stanley is looking at him with that glare that’s both flat and judgmental. All men judge all other men. It’s nothing to be nervous about, so Gore is very nervous and closes his eyes while inhaling deeply, exhaling pointedly, and then opening his eyes and relaxing back into a smile.

            Stanley makes no preludes, ever. “Lieutenant, did you frequently have headaches back on land?”

            Gore moves his chin carefully back and forth once. “Not much. A few with the regular winter chills and pains every year. And the occasional one for no reason, but that’s the case for most men, from what I gather.”

            Stanley says nothing.   

            Goodsir tucks David Young’s blanket closer around him and then moves to Stanley, hovering, not quite far away from him but not very close either. “It’s quite common, I believe, yes. Sometimes being in the sun too long, or staying up a bit too late at night is all it takes.”

            “Is it? That’s interesting.” Gore pretends to mull the notion over. “Possibly that’s why I had this one, then. I read a volume of Sir John Ross’s memoirs last night and was so carried away, I stayed up an hour later than usual. Yes, I remember now. Excellent thinking, Dr. Goodsir.”

            “He’s not a doctor.” Stanley takes Gore’s glass from him and takes it over to be washed. “He’s an anatomist.”

            “I’m afraid I don’t know the difference.”

            “He was trained in anatomy, not the art of medicine,” Stanley says in his monotone while Goodsir wipes his hands on his apron even though there can’t be anything on them except maybe sweat from the Young boy’s brow.

            “Well. Yes, Dr. Stanley is correct, I’m not technically a doctor.” Goodsir shrugs one of his shoulders almost apologetically. “I do the best I can, though, especially since we’ve lost a few men alre-”

            “How are you feeling now, Lieutenant?” Stanley turns around and swiftly moves past Goodsir to stand in front of Gore.

            Gore nods once. “Better already. That’s good medicine.”

            “Indeed.”

            “I’m obliged. And I’ll say prayers for the boy.” Gore smiles at Stanley, then at Goodsir, who is curiously enough already smiling at him, and then makes his way back to his cabin.

            There is still an hour before dinner. Gore’s head is still throbbing. The drops aren’t actually working yet. He remembers Goodsir’s hand on David Young’s brow, Goodsir pulling the blanket closer around the boy.

Gore sits on his bed and resists the urge to take a blanket and drape it around himself.

***

            The night of David Young’s burial, Gore bunches up his blanket and holds it to his face to stifle the sounds of his heaving breath. He’s not quite at the point of crying yet. He’ll cry in probably ninety seconds, if he knows himself well enough, and he does. Ninety seconds later, the first tears push themselves onto his eyelashes and then dribble down to his chin and soak the blanket, forcing him to inhale his own tears as he continues to bury his face in it.

            Through his tears, he manages to work up a good enough image of a naked man to get himself off so that the pain in his head doesn’t have a chance to really take off. It’s weak pleasure and the pain begins in earnest soon after. He wonders how much David Young’s head hurt when he died. Your head can’t hurt after you die. You’re spared that, at least, while you lay in your coffin. Gore involuntarily imagines himself in a coffin and his heart rate picks up again and he shoves his face deeper into the blanket.

            Sick, sick, sick, sick. Death, death, death, death. That’s four men down. How many to go? Who’s next?

            There’s a very special kind of exhaustion that usually runs through Gore’s veins after he’s cried his eyes out. It’s dull but it’s potent. But tonight he doesn’t feel it.

            He feels the twinge in his forehead once, then twice.

            He sits up and watches his hands shake in his lap. When they’ve stopped, he dresses and exits his cabin. The ship isn’t quiet, because it’s never truly quiet, not with half a hundred men snoring and breathing and rolling over in their beds. Gore sometimes thinks they’re so loud that he must be hearing their dreams as well. He does his best to take soundless steps to the infirmary.

            There are so many bottles in the medicine chest on the counter but Gore recognizes the one that contains the drops he swallowed earlier because he memorizes objects when he’s afraid, as a kind of distraction technique. He carefully plucks up the glass bottle and cringes as it _tinks_ against another. His hand is still shaking through the throbs spreading across the front of his head. He has to move fast. How many drops did Stanley mix for him? Three? He’d better only take one, then, so the bottle looks just as full. It won’t help much but if it takes even the barest edge off, he might have a shot at sleeping and not having bags under his puffy eyes in the morning.

He’s screwed the cap off and has tipped the bottle close to his tongue when he hears breathing in the room behind him.

            “I can’t let you do that, Lieutenant,” Goodsir says softly.

***

            Gore sits on the edge of one of the infirmary beds as Goodsir turns the lamp up. He asks to see where the pain is located, grabs Gore’s fingers from his forehead when Gore almost touches the spot, and then gets to the business of the drops.

            “You only had to ask, you know, I would have been happy to help,” Goodsir says as he measures. “It would have alarmed me less as well, knowing someone was in here who wasn’t…” He trails off and doesn’t finish the thought but mixes the drops with a little more force than is necessary, Gore thinks, from the rapid _clinkclinkclinkclinkclink_ sound of the spoon against the glass.

            Goodsir is still upset over David Young. Gore doesn’t blame him. He can almost hear the words through imaginary dripping tears that shine in Goodsir’s beard: _I failed him_. Gore chooses from his reserve store of emotions and injects sympathy into his voice. “I didn’t want to wake anyone up when I knew I could fix the drink myself.”

            Goodsir turns to him and he looks tired in a non-sleepy way, looks in pain in a way that indicates a scratch on the spirit, not the skin. It takes one to know one. “Lieutenant, it’s kind of you to say that, it really is, but it’s my duty as a person in the medical field, and as a person in general, really, you know, to help you at any hour you require.” Goodsir doesn’t seem to know how to break his thoughts down into separate sentences. It’s a bad habit he needs to work on, if people are going to take him seriously. Gore keeps smiling as Goodsir hands the glass to him. Gore raises it to him before he drinks.

            “It seemed poor etiquette to rouse a sleeping man when I didn’t have to. That’s how I figured it.” He downs the glass.

            Goodsir purses his lips. “I have a duty, Lieutenant, I wish it were different in this case, but it’s part of my job and I need to do my job well and I have to know how much medicine we have at any given time in case of emergencies. You see, the emergencies, it’s very important we’re well stocked with medicine. We learned that…” Goodsir is fiddling with his apron again. Gore hears the words perched on his lips like wounded birds.

            He raises the sympathy level in his tone. “The hard way.” Gore sighs. “Yes, the hard way. I know. But I would have told you in the morning that I only needed the one drop. I’ll do that if this happens again, how about that?”

            Goodsir stares at him. His eyebrows raise and the corners of his lips seem almost to twitch up, but then he freezes. When he moves again, he shakes his head slowly. “No, I’m afraid not, unfortunately, Lieutenant. Emergencies, you see-”

            Gore holds both hands up. “And I’m happy to assist with any emergency. But I have duties as well, and if I need just one drop for my head, there’s really no trouble at all if I come and get it and then go back to bed, is there?”

            “It’s…” Goodsir visibly takes a deep breath but his voice doesn’t falter when he almost whispers, “Yes, it is a trouble, Lieutenant.”

            Gore can’t narrow his eyes at Goodsir like he wants to, so he taps into his store of cheer as he says lightly, “Well then, a trouble I’d hate to be. How about I make it even easier. I’ll leave you a note when I take a drop, I’ll leave it in a place you can see when you come in.”

            Goodsir says nothing. He’s completely still but for his blinking eyelids.

            Gore licks his lips to hide any sizzle of frustration that might be visible in his face. “It would be no trouble to me personally if I were to leave you-”

            “You said, ‘when,’ Lieutenant.”

            Gore retracts his tongue and pushes his mouth into a smile. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Goodsir?”

            Goodsir has stopped blinking and there’s a strange brightness in his gaze that’s both knowing and grim and Gore can pinpoint the exact moment when he knows that he’s slipped and Goodsir can read him no matter how fine the print is.

“This time, you said, ‘when I take a drop,’ and not ‘if I take a drop.’ I gather you think you’ll be taking these drops again. Maybe frequently. Because you need help, clearly.” He says it not unkindly but he leaves out the word “Lieutenant.” He takes the glass from Gore’s numb fingers.

            He did a good job breaking up his sentences.

            Even Gore knows a smile would be false in this moment, useless as a spent trap. Timid Henry “Harry” D. S. Goodsir, subject of snarky comments from the men (“He splashed cold water on himself when I was in there, I should have growled at him like a polar bear, he would have screamed, that would have been a laugh,” “His muttonchops should do the talking for him, they’re the thing that has a personality.”). Goodsir, trailing Dr. Stanley around like a lost dog, like a man who can’t figure out where he belongs in space. Goodsir, who isn’t even a doctor, who doesn’t even seem to know why he’s here at all, hands wringing his apron, doing useless tasks like tucking in blankets. He’s like a misplaced object on the expedition.

            And he’s a man who just threw Gore’s shutters open.

            Gore doesn’t need to inject anger into his voice, needs only to modulate his tone to sound dangerously quiet. “I think you overstepped just now, Mr. Goodsir.”

            Goodsir places the glass on a table without looking at it and crosses his arms behind his back. “I believe you thought I wasn’t very smart, Lieutenant Gore.”

            “You’d be right. You’re being very stupid right now.”

            “But you’re the one who snuck into the infirmary in the dark of night to take medicine from our finite store and then planned to lie about it afterwards.”

            A sentence graceful in its composition, ugly in its truth.

            Gore stands up from the bed, cursing himself for how jerky the motion seems. “I can have you written up for insolence aimed at a superior officer,” he breathes.

            Goodsir doesn’t blink. “You won’t do that. You might be my superior officer, but that would still make you a small man.”

            That’s when Gore’s reserves dry up and he falls back down on the bed, first on his arse, then down onto his side, the tears silent but steady. Was this the bed David Young died in?

  
***

       “No,” Goodsir says as he flips a handkerchief out of his apron and passes it to Gore, now sitting up in the bed. “Mr. Young died in a different one.”

            “Thank God.” Gore realizes how the statement sounds as he blows his nose and hastily swallows and tries to amend himself but Goodsir is shaking a hand at him in that familiar side to side gesture.

            “I know what you meant. It’s alright.”

            “It’s not alright.” Gore balls up the handkerchief and squeezes it. “It’s not at all alright.” There’s still a tiny bit of wet he hasn’t thumbed from the corner of his eye and he swipes at it like it’s a stinging insect that needs repelling.

            “No. It isn’t alright.” Goodsir finally sighs and sits on the edge of Gore’s bed, facing away from him. “I don’t like lying to men, Lieutenant, but I don’t like to be lied to, either. I’m not different from other men in that. I know you all think I’m a carpet you can walk your muddy boots over. Sometimes I am. But-”

            “I don’t think you’re a car-”

            Goodsir waves his hand and turns to face Gore. “I hadn’t finished. I was going to say, ‘But tonight I’m not.’ I am very tired,” he says quietly, “and you know that I don’t mean that I only need a night’s sleep and then I’ll be refreshed and ready to brave a new day.”

            It’s disturbingly similar to Gore’s notion that Goodsir is also tired in a way that penetrates soul-deep. “Yes. I had guessed.”

            “Then I’m dropping this game.” Goodsir stands up and unties his apron. “You have to be honest with me if you want my help from now on, Lieutenant. You have to knock on my door and ask for a tincture. You cannot steal from me. I am sorry that your head is not well. I am sorry you are anxious. But from now on the only way to-”

            “Wait.” Gore squeezes through the handkerchief so that his nails press into his palm. “Repeat that last part.”

            Goodsir drapes his apron on the back of a chair and looks over his shoulder at Gore. “Which part?” The light isn’t bright in here, but it’s bright enough to show that there isn’t an actual question in Goodsir’s eyes.

            Gore’s mouth falls shut.

            “Yes.” Goodsir sits on the bed again and lays his hand on Gore’s. “I’m sorry you’re anxious all the time. I’m sorry I’m depressed all the time, too.”

***

            “It’s like there’s a nothingness so big that I feel like I could fall into myself and never be able to climb out. For so long I heard, ‘Harry, ding dong, that’s the doorbell, can you hear it, are you with us?’ Because when I felt the nothingness, I would just sit and stare and people would go on about my ‘wool gathering.’ At the family dinner table, at recess in school, at teas with my professors. That’s when I really started making the effort, you know. When my professors noticed me becoming absent. That had to stop happening so that I wasn’t considered queer in the head. I started paying a little _too_ much attention…hyper-focusing, I suppose you could call it, to each person I spoke to. I didn’t mean to cultivate such an earnestness in myself, but now that I’ve done it, it’s like a shirt I slip into every day, or a pair of very comfortable shoes. It’s my ‘Mr. Goodsir’ act, and I forget I’m acting. Actually, that’s not quite true. I know I’m doing it, but my mind works so hard to forget that I’m doing it that I can keep it just below the surface. Most of the time. I don’t truly relax until I’m alone, and even then the emptiness isn’t filled by anything.”

            “So all this time. That air of, eagerness, I would say, about you. It helps you survive among everyone because it hides you.”

            “Yes. Just as your cheerfulness is your mask.”

            “Right. Right.” Gore is lying on his side again while Goodsir leans back on his elbows next to him on the bed. Gore has no idea what time it is. Probably past midnight. But he dreads when Goodsir will finally rise and tell him it’s time they both went back to their rooms.

            Gore’s fury burned out fast. He’s not sure it was even a real fire of anger at Goodsir for decoding him and not admitting it right away. It seemed contradictory for a man who doesn’t “like to be lied to.” And that’s when Gore remembered that all he did was try to buy Goodsir’s consent and silence in false pleasantries and he realized that the anger was more of a simmer that never reached a boil because it was a reflection on himself, not Goodsir. He had flipped more lies at Goodsir than the infirmary probably contained drops for his drink.

            “I’m so afraid,” he whispers. “I did think you were like a carpet I could tread on. I’m sorry. My pain is…it’s not an excuse. I’m sorry.”

            Goodsir nods. “I know it’s not an excuse. And I gave you a very hard time before I decided I was tired of your lies. I lied too, in that way. Neither of us win, we’re both where we started right before we met tonight.”

            “I can’t remember a time I wasn’t like this. As a child, I would cry when my mother was gone for even ten minutes. When she came back, I’d hide myself under her skirt and cling to her leg. And I kept doing that until one day I was suddenly too old to do it anymore and she pushed me away from her, she looked so disgusted, and I knew there was something wrong with me. I never wanted to leave home as I grew older. The world was too big, and too much could go wrong. Being a Marine, a Lieutenant. I don’t know how I made it so far up the ladder. It’s the cheerfulness, I think. People like it. They like me. Or they like what I show them. But I never wanted this life. Life. Do you hate life?”

            “What?”

            “Do you hate it? For what it gave you.” Gore toys with a clean handkerchief and leans his head up to look at Goodsir in the soft light. Goodsir is looking straight ahead, and then suddenly he’s looking into his lap.

            “Well. When I let myself think about it, yes, actually. I hate it and yet I want it, even when I feel like I don’t.”

            “How do you cope with it, then?”

            “I don’t know that I do. Or do it very well, anyway. I studied anatomy because I thought if I made healing people my eventual goal, it would heal some part of me too. Not cure me, but just…keep my mind away from collapsing in on itself.”

            “You felt it as a child too?”

            “Oh yes, all the time. I thought it was symptomatic of the other boys ignoring or teasing me at school. But then I made a few friends and I was happy when I was with them and then I’d leave them and curl up in bed and feel like the loneliest person in the world. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to not exist at all.”

            Gore rolls onto his back and covers his eyes with one hand.

            “Are you alright? I mean, your head, is it better at all?” Goodsir shifts on the bed to better look down at Gore, who takes his hand away, and, he realizes with a small lurch of his heart, because he doesn’t want to block his view of Goodsir’s face.

            He blinks for a moment, because it’s all he can think to do, before he says, “Yes, it’s not as bad, although the stolen drop would help even more. I’m not saying that to be joking, by the way. I wish I hadn’t touched that bottle before you did.”

            “I wish I had an infinite store for you.”

            “What? Really?”

            “Yes.”

            “What you just said, about not wanting to exist at all. It’s the saddest thing in the world. And yet I feel better knowing someone else has felt it too. Is that awful of me?”

            “No. Loneliness is the awful part, lonely among millions of people. On land, I mean.”

            “I know what you meant.”

            “Listen, Lieutenant-”

            “Graham. Not even ‘Gore.’ Just ‘Graham.’”

            “If you’re sure…”

            “‘Graham.’”

            “Alright, I’m ‘Harry,’ then. Listen. I can give you a small supply of the drops. Very small, because I was not, in fact, lying about our finite supplies and the need for as many as possible for emergencies. But the bottle you drank from, it’s becoming empty. The next time you need it this badly, come to me and I’ll just give you the bottle to hold onto.”

            “Oh, no.” Gore rolls back onto his side. “I can’t ask that, not after what I’ve done.”

            “You have to not care what you’ve just done. You’re done lying. Are you still done lying?”

            “Yes.”

  
            “Then I need you to have the bottle so that I’ll sleep better knowing you have it. I don’t want Dr. Stanley to catch you in here.”

            “Why were you in here? Did you follow me in?”

            “No.” Goodsir pinches the bridge of his nose. “I was coming in to pray over David Young’s bed. When he died, he…he was very, _very_ unwell. I can’t go to his grave so I thought I’d come back here to say a few words for him.”

            Gore freezes, then jerks himself upwards, stomach knotty. “You never got the chance. I stopped you. I have to go.” Guilt feels like bile coming up over his tongue. He swings his legs over the side of the bed but Goodsir shoots forward and grabs Gore’s arm.

            “ _No_. Don’t go.” His fingertips are pressed firm into Gore’s skin and Gore thinks he can feel the ridges and whorls on them. “I don’t want to be alone, now that I haven’t been.”

***

            They sit in silence for awhile, side by side with their heads on pillows against the wall. It must be one or two in the morning. They will both need to be dressed and ready for the day in a few hours.

            Neither one of them moves.

            “How is your head?” Goodsir finally whispers.

            Gore closes his eyes. “Mostly better.”

            “Where does it still hurt?”

            “One of my temples.”

            “What did you take, back home?”

            Gore spiels off the different tonics and tinctures he’s tried over the years. “I switch between them. There’s no _one_ that has ever worked all the time.”

            “That’s distressing. I’m sorry.”

            “I don’t want the bottle.”

            “I’m giving it to you. Have you tried anything else, besides medicine, anything physical?”

            Gore thinks of the hundreds of times he’s jerked himself off because he discovered one day while fantasizing about a handsome schoolmate that it lessened the pain of the mild ache he’d been developing before he’d laid down. I touched my head and then my head felt better, he thinks, and snorts aloud.

            “Oh,” Goodsir says, very quietly.

            Panic creates jagged shapes in Gore’s chest but he swallows, breathes, breathes for another few moments, and says, voice a little husky, “I don’t imagine that’s what you had in mind.”

            Goodsir is silent for a few moments before he says, voice slighter louder, “No, it’s exactly what I had in mind. I was going to suggest it to you if you didn’t do it already. Because it’s all I can think of for more advice, and it’s the only thing that stops me from being numb for a few minutes sometimes.” He adds, very quietly, “I don’t have one man I think about every time, but the general idea of men is helpful.”

            They turn their heads on their pillows toward each other.

            I shouldn’t wait, Gore thinks as he licks his bottom lip, then his top lip, then runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth. We haven’t got much time.

            Their silences seem to speak to each other like two paths meeting and forming a hollow for something lovely to shelter inside. Goodsir touches Gore’s arm very lightly with one finger.

            “Yes,” Gore breathes, and heaves himself onto his side at the same time that Goodsir rolls to face him with his fingers pressing their probably beautiful prints into Gore’s arm again.

***

            Speaking to Goodsir through touch is one of the most soul-baring things Gore has ever done. He’s showing a man how he touches himself by touching him. Explaining pleasure by giving it.

            They’re both already hard by the time they unfasten their trousers and pull them down. Goodsir is still trying to pull his down when Gore touches him and Goodsir’s hands fall away, fingers compulsively clutching into his palms as Gore strokes his head with one finger pad. Goodsir angles his hips closer to Gore and reaches for him with a shaking hand. He doesn’t try to stop the tremor in his hand as he takes Gore’s cock into it, and Gore is moved by the honesty he’s been shown as pleasure gathers and beats fast with his blood. Gore has never actually been with a man before, and he guesses that Goodsir hasn’t either. Whether he has or not doesn’t mean much to him when Goodsir slides a finger up and down his length, causing Gore to put more pressure on Goodsir’s head, which makes Goodsir’s finger press harder on Gore, which leaves them both breathless and motionless for a few moments.

            But they both know they don’t have a few moments to spare and so Gore continues thumbing Goodsir’s head until he feels wetness, then sheathes his whole cock loosely in his fingers. Goodsir has been going the opposite way on Gore, caressing around the base before gently moving all his fingertips up the length and to the head. Gore realizes his cheek is pressed firmly into Goodsir’s pillow now and Goodsir’s breath is pulsing hotly on Gore’s neck and he’s not sure if they’re rocking the bed or not but fuck it this is happening and Goodsir’s touch is so gentle on the head of his cock he might cry the only happy tears of his whole goddamn life.

            Gore senses when Goodsir is ready to go a little rougher when Goodsir moves his hand back down to the base and curls his fingers tighter. Almost in unison they elbow themselves even closer to each other which causes a few uneven laughs and the first time they’ve looked in each other’s eyes since they began. Goodsir’s eyes are unfocused and he’s struggling to keep them locked with Gore’s but he’s trying as his mouth hovers between the shape of an _o_ and a full smile. Gore is sure that it’s the most beautiful smile he’s ever seen and might ever be given. Even through the ecstatic sensations making vibrant spots of color glow across his closed eyelids, he’s realizing that Goodsir is indeed very beautiful to him and whether his feeling is reciprocated is something he won’t know until later, if and when he asks, but all he feels right now is purity and there’s no reason to dilute it with worry.

            And realizing that he feels no worry in this moment enhances the joy of Goodsir’s touch as he pumps Gore faster and Gore tries for the same speed on Goodsir and it clearly doesn’t matter if he matches it because however fast he went, it’s perfect because Goodsir comes first, neck arching back as his hips buck up into Gore’s hand. And his grip on Gore becomes tighter and that’s perfect too because Gore has never come longer or with more waves of pleasurable reverberations throughout his body long after.

            There’s not much time for an afterglow but, “Any pain?” and “No, I can’t feel it right now,” and the concrete thought of _No pain right now_ makes a tear slide down Gore’s cheek. He lets it fall without moving to wipe it, but he inclines his face to Goodsir when Goodsir moves to stroke it away.

***

            Gore doesn’t think of it as a habit they share. Habits develop unintentionally. Being with Goodsir is thrillingly intentional.

            It occurs to them the second night in bed in the infirmary that if enough men are awake at the same time, they might realize that the same sets of footsteps are taking the same path in the same timeframe every night and that might need investigating.

            “Fuck,” Gore whispers. “What do we do?”

            Goodsir bites his lip as he buttons himself back up. “We…might have to improvise. I stay in here after Dr. Stanley leaves, or you come in before me and wait, or we…I’m not sure…I’ve never done this before.” He drags a hand back through his curls and smiles behind his shoulder at Gore, who wasn’t in much of a smiling mood until this very moment, when he smiles with an open mouth.

            “You’re quite beautiful,” he says without thinking and then he’s the one biting his lip and rubbing his eyes with one knuckle until Goodsir take his hand away and presses their cheeks together for a long moment. Gore breathes in next to Goodsir’s ear and whispers, “I mean it.”

            “I know you do,” Goodsir whispers back. “You’re quite easy to look at, too.”

            Gore chuckles and can’t remember the last time he “chuckled” and it’s all he can do to keep his hands from Goodsir’s hips again.

            So they improvise. They look at the calendar together and plan for certain nights, learn to communicate in glances about who should wait for whom at what time. It’s a complex language that they invent, develop, and execute to perfection in rapid time.

            Not everything happens as quickly. The first month, they only touch each other’s faces afterwards. Then their shirts begin to be removed, and fingers roam around chests and backs. One night, Gore doesn’t quite manage to muffle his keening when he comes and Goodsir is only barely able to cover his mouth. Gore kisses Goodsir’s palm without thinking and then Goodsir presses the most delicate of kisses to Gore’s temple. Their first kiss on the lips lands more like Gore’s mouth on the top lip of Goodsir’s but it just doesn’t matter if it was a _good_ kiss or not. It was a first kiss for two touch-starved, sad, lonely men who love men, and now they’ve had a first kiss and so it’s perfect.

            Trousers are completely removed soon after and there are soon no places on each other’s bodies that they haven’t touched.

            The “I love you”s are simple speeches but they’ve already laid their souls bare before each other so many times, so many emotional blood veins visible, that they don’t feel the need to make elaborate presentations of their love to each other. Gore props his chin on Goodsir’s shoulder and Goodsir holds Gore’s hand against his heart.

            “I am _safe_ when I’m with you, Harry. I have been sailing for years but I’ve finally docked. That’s what it feels like. I docked and anchored next to you. The fear…it’s rooted so deep, I won’t ever be able to uproot it, but I bear it because everything I tell you about it, you keep it safe. Everything I give to you, you accept it. You accept _me_. Everything is safe. I love it. I’m in love with it because I’m in love with you.”

            “I don’t…”

            “What? What is it?”

            “I can’t possibly follow that, Graham. God.”

            “You don’t have to say anything.”

            “I want to say something. It won’t be very poetic. I only…well, we only started this as something physical, didn’t we? I didn’t know we would reach this point. Simply having another man touch me, that was poetry, now, if I really understand what poetry is. That would have been wonderful on its own. I didn’t expect to finally live a beautiful life. But I do. It’s beautiful because you keep teaching me ways to be free.”

            “I teach _you_ something?”

            “Yes, all the time. Freedom, honesty-”

            “Honesty! The first thing I ever did was lie to you. If I only knew then-”

            “‘-what I know now.’ And that’s the thing, Graham, we brought out the beauty in each other. I lied too, remember?”

            “Clear as day.”

            “That was mostly a rhetorical question.”

            “‘Mostly.’ I know. I know. There was a popular song in Portsmouth, about beauty being ‘a treasure from Heaven’s hand.’ I hated it back then. Too soppy. And I knew I’d never find love so it made me bitter, which made me upset, which made me scared. And now I wish like hell I remembered the lyrics, but because I can make them better, now. The beauty thing, it was about Heaven giving it to you. I don’t need to know what gave you to me, Harry. I don’t need it to be Heaven. I don’t need it to be Divine. In fact I like the idea that there was no hand of fate in it, or whatever that expression is. I like the idea that we just happened to cross paths. It makes me believe that life…that, well, you have to keep living to see what happens. That nothing is impossible if you only keep living. I did, and we made this happen. _We_ made it happen, Harry. Not Heaven. Just two men who feel beautiful when they’re together. I have a knack for poetry, maybe? Should I submit this to a competition when we’re back home?”

            “Don’t you dare. It’s for me and I’m keeping it safe. God. I love you.”

            “Kiss me each time you say that.”

Gore runs out of drops when the ice freezes the two ships in place. He has to drain the bottle one night when the creaking and groaning and splitting sounds against the hull make him feel like he’s going to suffocate from the inside out. The only ways he’s able to manage his headaches and his agonizing thoughts and galloping heartbeat through the next months are Goodsir both touching him and whispering him through the pain. Goodsir tells Gore that he is able to cope with the chasm of his emptiness both touching him and listening to him talk about how it matters not a damn what kind of malady he was born with, Gore will love him even when he’s so sad he can’t speak. Sometimes Gore can’t speak either, can only bury his face in Goodsir’s shoulder and let his heart beat against Goodsir’s chest to communicate. The “thu-thump” of the beat increasingly sounds like “my, man, my man, my, man” to Gore’s ears.  

            My man.

            Harry repeats that in his mind when one day he is suddenly spending the rest of his life without Graham and since that won’t change, his prayers don’t change in their signature, which is, “You are safe, so I am safe too, you’re not in pain, so I can bear the pain, you’re not scared so I can face down my emptiness with a steel nerve, I loved you and love you always and all our heartbeat messages still beat together every moment of every day, they will never cease, my man, my Graham. I love you. Good night.”

  

 

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for this from a speculation from disenchanted about which Terror characters suffer migraines. I don't suffer from migraines but I do suffer from anxiety headaches (and an anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder). I gave the headaches to Gore to explore how he'd cope with anxiety in general and his canonical friendliness to Harry made them seem like a good match.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17721185) by [theseatheseatheopensea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseatheseatheopensea/pseuds/theseatheseatheopensea)




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